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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/28717575">Safety</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/mikawazowski/pseuds/mikawazowski'>mikawazowski</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Gotham (TV)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Bittersweet, Character Study, Emotional Manipulation, M/M, Mention of canon-typical violence, Reflection, Requited Love, Short One Shot, Sorta Happy Ending, Traumatized character, Vaguely post series, bruh this is hard to tag it’s just 1000 words of oswald cobblepot being emo, complicated feelings, courtesy of sofia falcone, hurt/comfort but not really?, idk dog it’s up to u i just work here, implied established relationship?, or between s5 e11 and s5 e12, self reflection, written during sad boy hours</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2021-01-12</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2021-01-12</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-13 10:48:55</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>1,930</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/28717575</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/mikawazowski/pseuds/mikawazowski</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>In safety, he could only breathe in soft gasps, and it was unclear if he couldn’t move or just didn’t want to. He sank and sank and the pressure on his ribcage was excruciating yet soft. It made him doubt if his paranoia was necessary, thus heightening it. Tooth-rotting sweetness may have been a cliche, but it was true. You let sugar linger on your teeth and they will shrivel up and die. </p><p>Oswald internally scoffed at his own convoluted thoughts. Danger was safe and safety was dangerous— what a terribly Gotham sentiment.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Oswald Cobblepot &amp; Edward Nygma, Oswald Cobblepot/Edward Nygma</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>8</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>23</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>Safety</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Being in danger made Oswald feel at ease, in an ironic sort of way.</p><p>Danger was familiar and he knew exactly what to do with it. Danger had always been with him and always would be, the imminent threat of death becoming his security blanket as time passed. The one thing that would never leave him, he noted. </p><p>It was the uncertainty in the air as he avoided puddles in the dark, wet streets of Gotham as a young boy. Being sure to look in every alleyway before passing it, but still keep himself hidden. Knowing to never make eye contact with tall, threatening men, but not to ignore them, because that will make them equally angry. It was the simultaneous thrill and terror that consumed him after stealing a beautiful ring and bringing it home as a gift to his darling mother.</p><p>(His mother, though she was the manifestation of love and comfort and the one good thing in his life, never kept him safe. No, that would be ridiculous; it was his job to take care of her. Of course, he had failed.) </p><p>Danger was praying to everything he didn’t believe in. Praying that they wouldn’t be evicted this month, and no vicious children would shout and kick and chase him down the street, and no one had seen him pickpocketing that woman and they would just be able to have a nice thing for once. </p><p>It was ultimately knowing that his prayers were all futile. </p><p>It rose to a new level when navigating the beautifully hazardous worlds of Fish Mooney, Don Marconi and Don Falcone, as a man who they all saw and yet didn’t. Worlds of toothy smiles and commanding voices, luxurious meals and spilt blood, smoke and music and screams. He fought tooth and nail to take that world for his own, only to find it was the same world he’d always lived in. Only, instead of being disposable, he had a target on his back; instead of everyone being willing to kill him, everyone wanted to kill him. Hardly a change at all. There was no sudden improvement in his mental state, no sudden invulnerability. No difference. </p><p>(Okay, maybe there was a little difference- having money was nice.)</p><p>Danger was consistent in every fitful sleep he had ever fallen into and every waking moment of his life. Fighting for survival was his perpetual state of being, and he found himself embracing the sick sort of comfort.</p><p>Genuinely being out of harm’s way, on the other hand? Terrifying.</p><p>Not that he had experienced it much, but whenever he at least believed he was, it swallowed him up. He drowned in the overwhelming expanse of kindness and pure intentions, hated it every bit as much as he craved it. </p><p>In safety, he could only breathe in soft gasps, and it was unclear if he couldn’t move or just didn’t want to. He sank and sank and the pressure on his ribcage was excruciating yet soft. It made him doubt if his paranoia was necessary, thus heightening it. Tooth-rotting sweetness may be a cliche, but it was true. You let sugar linger on your teeth and they will shrivel up and die. </p><p>Oswald internally scoffed at his own convoluted thoughts. Danger was safe and safety was dangerous— what a terribly Gotham sentiment. </p><p>Sometimes Edward would indulge his pain tolerance, with words rough and scorching and punishing, nails digging in, gun or knife poised against his chest. He had been Oswald’s enemy for long enough, he knew how to do it. More frequently in the days since their rekindled partnership, though, he <i>loved</i> Oswald, slow and tender and so agonizingly sweet. 

In his opinion, the ladder was far more sadistic than just biting or some shit.</p><p>He wondered if that was intentional. If it was, it would create a bit of a paradox. Keeping Oswald safe to torture him would mean it wasn’t safety at all, which would null the torturous effect. He should bring the logic puzzle to Ed sometime and watch the gears spin in his head. </p><p>It was certainly intentional when Sofia Falcone did it. Oswald knew that for a fact. She had noticed and subsequently weaponized this very loophole against him without a second thought, artfully predicting his feelings and accounting for his paranoia at every turn. She knew exactly when Oswald would want to believe her kindness, then grow uneasy and try to prove her Judas. She kept him swaying in a perpetual state of nausea, warbling back and forth until he doubted any conclusion he came to, unable to tell if things were really changing or he was losing his mind. Was he being sabotaged or sabotaging himself? In the end it had been both.</p><p>Oswald thought about the activity where you found an ant on a piece of paper, and trapped it by drawing circles or lines on the page. Edward once explained- unprompted, because of course he had- that insects will avoid the lines because of the solvent in the ink, which it doesn’t want to get on itself. This allows you to create a maze around the ant with the flick of a pen and laugh as it tries to escape. </p><p>That was how he pictured Sofia’s mind games from her perspective. Watching her tiny, pathetic prey turn around and try to run, only to be stopped by a new wall resurrected out of thin air. Oswald so despised the idea that he could be watched from above. He so despised the idea that the late Sofia Falcone understood how to hurt him more than Edward did. He banished the possibility from his mind immediately.</p><p>Oswald found it both amusing and painful to reflect on how fervently he’d once chased after safety, happiness, love. </p><p>Among countless examples stood out one in particular, back when he was the mayor of Gotham. He’d had the faintest taste of domesticity and gotten drunk on it, had become obsessed with the simple sweetness of companionship. He’d had someone to rely on for the first time and realized he wanted to be relied on in turn. He wanted to spend the rest of his life- their lives- in the soft bliss they settled into. He loved Edward Nygma so hard it hurt, but it didn’t hurt bad enough for him to stop chasing it. Not yet.</p><p>Contrary to popular belief, he didn’t <i>need</i> Ed to return his affections— he would accept ‘no’ for an answer, repress his feelings and settle for any form of having the man in his life, at the end of the day— but oh, how he wanted it. He wanted it in his core and he thought he might burst unless he knew for a fact that it was impossible. He just needed to know for certain, then he could euthanize his dreams and never speak another romantic word. </p><p>What he couldn’t cope with was the idea of an outside factor ruining it. If Edward could never love him, he needed to know it was because he, Oswald Cobblepot, was not good enough and never would have been. Not because some Isabella beat him to it.</p><p>In the end, ironically, because everything had to be ironic in his life, he got his wish.</p><p>Oswald was fully and entirely the reason Edward didn’t love him. Not the outside factor, but what he had done to it. And what he’d done to it was a great indication of him as a human. Isabella was like a test sent from God or Satan or some fucking thing and he’d failed miserably without even noticing. </p><p>In some bittersweet world where he’d done the right thing, perhaps Edward would have given him a gentle rejection that led back to their platonic relationship, or at least an imitation of it. Instead, it led to curdling hatred and more blood and screaming and sworn enemies. A return to his status quo of danger, now starring Ed Nygma. 

He supposed this outcome was either what he wanted, or what he deserved. He couldn’t decide which. </p><p>This was the experience that made him fully understand the fact that love was simply a honey trap, and it meant a slow death. Nothing else. </p><p>Reflecting on this years-old wound was always painful. It was even more painful to admit that, despite what he liked to tell himself, it was not a thing of the past. It was not a well-learned lesson that he could chastise his younger self for not absorbing sooner. Despite fully understanding the true, insidious nature of safety, love and happiness, and <i>hating</i> them, he still craved them. </p><p>That was evident in how vulnerable he had been to Sofia Falcone’s kindness in the first place, in the wake of his tenderly broken heart. It was evident in the ‘ice sculpture’ he kept, and in the way his heart continued to break every time someone like Zsazz betrayed him. Evident in his need to protect Martín and his eventual acquisition of an aptly-named dog, both of whom he cherished with all he had. </p><p>It was irritatingly, particularly evident in the many ways he hung onto Edward Nygma. It was a pattern that never broke. From freeing the Riddler to abandoning his revenge for all Sofia did to keep the man alive. Afterwards, Oswald was betrayed once again, all for some woman Edward believed himself in love with, and when that relationship turned sour he brought both of them back from the dead without even saying ‘I told you so.’ More examples blended together in his memories, bitter reminders. They were all so terribly blurry now, they had melted into a fever dream by the years passing and the heat of his resentment for them. </p><p>(Actually, it wasn’t the memories he resented. It was the very fact that he didn’t regret any of it. Not one memory, not for a moment. He would repeat his actions a thousand times over, given the opportunity, and knowing his luck he likely would be. He had to hate himself for that a little, out of principle.)</p><p>In his current life, he observed very tentatively, his usual comfort of danger and hatred was nowhere to be found. </p><p>The two of them had fought together in more ways than one, exercised mercy and loyalty that caught both of them off-guard, risked life and limb (and lost them, if you replaced limb with eye), and, after the rebuilding of Gotham commenced, their partnership of convenience didn’t disappear.</p><p>He didn’t want to jinx it, but years kept passing and it truly looked like Edward would not be crushing his mended heart, no matter how many opportunities Oswald presented him. More years passed and suddenly they were partners in everything. Oswald was held and cherished, squeezed and not broken, kissed and swallowed and devoured. After everything, Edward was willing to love Oswald in the way he had dreamt so long ago, back in that time before a kiss started to seem like nothing more than a last meal on death row. How poetic that this sweetness could only take place after it was a little tainted.</p><p>That didn’t keep him from loving it. </p><p>Yes, he still itched to be returned to hell and felt tortured by heaven’s embrace, but he chose to stay where he was. Edward’s perfect gentleness stopped him from breathing and wrenched tears from his eyes, but he wouldn’t do a thing to sabotage it, not this time. </p><p>Safety would kill him, and it would be the slowest, most pleasant death he could hope for.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>i know my writing is rough i just had feelings abt this show and wanted to get them out lol. any comments will make my day, feel free to rant 👌</p></blockquote></div></div>
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